Welcome, I believe, to 1999. Pretty sure March ‘99 on the cover means January ‘99 in real life. The first time there was an Amazing Spider-Man 3, we met Dr. Octopus. This time, it’s… whatever this is. We pick up “mere minutes” after last issue, as the real Spider-Man leaps into action… and then remembers he doesn’t have webshooters on. He manages to adhere to a building, but he’s been falling pretty fast and slides all the way to the ground, scraping the gloves right off his fingers as he goes. That’s gotta hurt.
The Gathering of Five was a lot of nonsense, and this is not helping.
None of this explains why he’s calling him Shadrac. Just a big Torah fan? And who is Earrings? He fought the X-Men? Just looked him up, and his only appearances are in this run of Spider-Man. What is going on?? Terry comes by to say that Dr. Twaki is looking for Peter, and that the jerky guy isn’t so bad. Peter can’t find a way out as Terry leads him to the bossman, who insists Peter observe another of their ill-defined science projects. But Peter can’t let Shadrac roam free and bails, leavin Angry Guy to tell Twaki he always said Peter didn’t have the right commitment.
Earrings, also called Gray Dolman, forces Greg (There is literally no reason to call him Shadrac and I just don’t feel like it) to really get to burning, finally turning him into Ghost Rider with no clothes as seen on the covers. Spider-Man sees a ton of cops rushing by and begins to follow, and is soon joined by Iceman, who obviously has a stake in this after his home invasion. Greg is fighting cops, begging them to stop Dolman the whole time, but he’s being mind controlled and the cops don’t know that.
Greg immediately burns his way out of the ice, prompting Spidey and Iceman to back off. Spidey webs up his hands and asks Bobby to ice them up for extra protection, deciding someone’s gonna have to stop this the old fashioned way.
How does a walking skeleton have blood!? How is some dork with mind control allegedly more than 2 bona fide super heroes can handle? I guess we’ll find out in PPSM 3.. Which, as you can see, absolutely has to come before PPSM 2. So stupid. This issue gives us our first 3 letters about the relaunch, all positive. One gives Byrne credit for all the writing, so clearly, it was written by a very observant fan. Another is by Brad Walker. There’s a Brad Walker who’s been drawing comics for many years now, as I type this. Could it be? Is this that rare thing, a letter from a future Marvel creator in a book released after 1980? I hope so, that’s fun.